Swords of Central Genertela

[davecake]

Yeah, I like all of them. They are quite distinct.

[M Helsdon]

Lalian shield-wife. May do more work on the flesh-tones.

[M Helsdon]

I would very much like to rummage through Chaosium's files, but the page count is now fairly respectable, and will grow.

Edited May 18, 2020 by M Helsdon

[Borygon]

11 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

I would very much like to rummage through Chaosium's files, but the page count is now fairly respectable, and will grow.

No Waertegi or wolf pirates? Do You plan to save them for "Fleets and Enemies of Seven Seas"?

[M Helsdon]

3 hours ago, Borygon said:

No Waertegi or wolf pirates? Do You plan to save them for "Fleets and Enemies of Seven Seas"?

Wolf Pirates are covered in The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass.

The Waertagi are mentioned briefly in this volume. I could give them their own section, but it would be very short.

Edited May 19, 2020 by M Helsdon

[M Helsdon]

Latest.

[Brootse]

2 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Latest.

Nice! How tough compared to normal humans have you made them in your Glorantha?

[M Helsdon]

43 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Nice! How tough compared to normal humans have you made them in your Glorantha?

I haven't given any thought to stats, but like Brithini horali, Red Vadeli are broader and much stronger than ordinary humans. Add on top of that many are augmented by sorcery (though as there are as yet no Blue Vadeli to perform the most powerful augments, not so much as Brithini horali) and they are highly dangerous.

[jajagappa]

10 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Add on top of that many are augmented by sorcery

Might almost expect their skin to be covered in logical formulas to provide "armoring" and "strengthening" enchantments or similar.

[M Helsdon]

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Might almost expect their skin to be covered in logical formulas to provide "armoring" and "strengthening" enchantments or similar.

Probably, but am not sure I could pull that off in a sketch.

[davecake]

10 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

I haven't given any thought to stats, but like Brithini horali, Red Vadeli are broader and much stronger than ordinary humans. Add on top of that many are augmented by sorcery (though as there are as yet no Blue Vadeli to perform the most powerful augments, not so much as Brithini horali) and they are highly dangerous.

The Vadeli clearly don't restrict sorcery to only the Blue Vadeli sorcerers, but must be limited in sorcery in some ways. It is clear in the Guide that the Red and Brown Vadeli are expert sorcerers in their own right. 

The way I tend to handle it is the Red and Brown Vadeli somewhat restrict themselves to sorcery that is in theory related to their caste role. They also work on a general basis that the Vadeli follow caste law to the letter (it keeps them immortal), but if they find a way to work around its spirit they will do so with enthusiasm. They also get a bit of a free pass when dealing with magic that was encountered by the West after Zzaburs laws where created (what isn't forbidden is therefore permitted, goes Vadeli reasoning), while the Brithini (and those modern Malkioni that follow their reasoning, especially the Rokari) take the opposite tack - anything clearly outside Brithini thought is clearly wrong. 

For the Brown Vadeli, this means their sorcery includes sorcery to do with manipulating matter and crafts as crafts are Brown caste (so they can do a lot of sorcery manipulating physical matter), and so is dealing with the natural environment, sailing, animal husbandry (which becomes a facility with 'Command Monster' spells - they are particularly fond of bloodbirds, and various sea monsters), and to an extent trading (so they have some subtle manipulative magic). 

Red Vadili of course are soldiers - their sorcery is quite limited, but very focussed on war. They can enhance themselves, and hurt others. They also are the ones who deal with healing and simple defensive magic. They are perhaps the most limited sorcerers of the Vadeli - but because they are limited to just the most directly combat effective spells, no one really thinks of them that way. 

So they are inferior to Brithini Zzaburi, and so might seem magically lacking compared to fully enhanced Brithini Horali - but compared to pretty much anyone, are still ancient expert sorcerers. 

The Blue Vadeli, of course, would have a whole different, and very dangerous, focus on specifically quite magical things - otherworld beings and otherworld manipulation, manipulating and transforming the soul and the intellect, investigating the borders between life and death, and other things. The Red and Brown, while expert sorcerers, are fairly focussed on practical, physical and mundane world kind of magic. 

Two big other outs for the Vadeli. From the Viymorni they inherit a cross-caste focus on 'exploring' magic, the Telendarian school, which includes not just magic for travel but for stealthy reconnaisance, and stealing the secrets and magic of others. Also Tapping POW, which they learnt for fighting the spirit world when Viymorn first encountered it. The second is that many caste law restrictions specifically do not apply when on a ship, where there is a sort of maritime law, for various practical and historical (some involving Waertagi) reasons, so they can sneak around a few rules - this is why Vadeli leaders, in the modern era when they have no 'Talars' are usually admirals. So some marine magic seems reasonable. 

The Red Vadeli are also dangerous not because they can be expert sorcerers in military magic, but because they fight in a way that is intelligent and considered, but absolutely ruthless and without any concept of honour. Think of every vile tactic forbidden in civilised warfare, and the Red Vadeli are probably considering it. Traps, poison, disease, treachery, lies, threatening civilians, torture, etc. They also enjoy violence for its own sake, so will murder people in horrible ways for their own amusement. 

[Grievous]

Hey, btw, now that Nick's Rough Guide to Glamour is up for POD, can we please that as an option for Armies too? I have money and I want to spend it!!

[M Helsdon]

4 minutes ago, Grievous said:

Hey, btw, now that Nick's Rough Guide to Glamour is up for POD, can we please that as an option for Armies too? I have money and I want to spend it!!

Creating a POD via DriveThruRPG takes time because they have been seriously burnt by earlier failures where a large number of books were returned because of poor quality.

As Nick gave it away on FB, I can now confirm that a POD of A&E is being worked on.

1 hour ago, davecake said:

The Vadeli clearly don't restrict sorcery to only the Blue Vadeli sorcerers, but must be limited in sorcery in some ways. It is clear in the Guide that the Red and Brown Vadeli are expert sorcerers in their own right. 

I know.

I assume that the Red Vadeli fight in a more individualist style than Brithini horali; ideal for boarding actions.

[Joerg]

41 minutes ago, davecake said:

what isn't forbidden is therefore permitted, goes Vadeli reasoning

Or "What is forbidden is the good stuff that Zzabur is keeping to himself. Have you seen him aging?"

Vadeli tap, e.g. the sea - in the later Godtime, the Neliomi was tapped listless by Vadeli and Brithini using those energies in their mutual war. That means they have no qualms about spending oodles of magic points.

For speculation, the Blue Vadeli caste had the magic to dominate deities, enslaving them. The Browns only have magics to enslave normal mortals and the usual otherworldly creatures (spirits, elementals) that other cultures can affect with magic, too.

At least IMG they produce Slave Bracelets and Slave Collars. Have you ever wondered where the tapped magic goes?

The Brown Vadeli are bound to know some form of Resurrection, or possibly something like "(Re)Grow Body". Possibly consuming the body of a victim in the process (the magic consuming the victim's body, not the Vadeli).

In RQ terms they probably have casting skills above 100%, in HQ terms at least 2 masteries. They are likely to have inscribed spells with a huge number of points already prepaid.

1 hour ago, davecake said:

The Red Vadeli are also dangerous not because they can be expert sorcerers in military magic, but because they fight in a way that is intelligent and considered, but absolutely ruthless and without any concept of honour. Think of every vile tactic forbidden in civilised warfare, and the Red Vadeli are probably considering it. Traps, poison, disease, treachery, lies, threatening civilians, torture, etc. They also enjoy violence for its own sake, so will murder people in horrible ways for their own amusement. 

The brown Vadeli may not engage in hand-to-hand combat (except probably against hostile merfolk, which are valid targets for "fishing"). An ear-witness report is in Missing Lands, "The Vadeli Smile".

The Vadeli tactics you have described are little different from what you'd expect from the Kingdom of War. You left out meat shields, or sending burning hostages or captives back to the foes. Using (captive) children like the trolls use trollkin.

I wonder about the connections between the KoW and the Vadeli - they certainly were in the region. Could Lord Death on a Horse be a Vadeli returnee?

 

A field battle against Red Vadeli or Mostali may be similar to scenes from the Battle of the Somme or similar WW1 trench experiences. Magics or contraptions of mass destruction. Gorp or pratzim throwers, sylph-driven blowpipe organs, jars of enraged hornets, succubi or sleep spells to render an enemy motionless, strangling wires that relentlessly wind up once they have entangled something, wraiths created from recent victims, possibly clad in clouds of blood...

 

That bare-chested marine made me think of a spell "transfer damage" - you need a recipient for the damage dealt to the fighter. Every damage exceeding 1 hit point is dealt to the recipient victim, usually someone within sight of the attackers (needs to be within range). Up to the intensity of the spell points of damage can be transfered thus, or until the recipient is killed. Several recipients might be included in the spell, spreading out each individual wound.

For some reason, the Gloranthan western Übermensch is not toweringly tall, unless he is a zzaburi or a Luathan demigod.

 

The Brown Vadeli depicted in the Guide in the Jrustela section is female. What is the role of female Red VadelI? What would be their battle-dress?

[M Helsdon]

Latest.

[davecake]

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

At least IMG they produce Slave Bracelets and Slave Collars. Have you ever wondered where the tapped magic goes?

And IMG, these are Mostali artifacts originally, with very few others able to produce them, the main human source being one cult in Vormain, as in the guide - but its entirely possible that the Vadeli, who ran a slave empire in Pamaltela at a time when they were allied with the Mostali, know how, and may be another source of them. IMG it is quite common for Vadeli to bind spirits into spirit bindings that they can use for magic points as usual, and when they need more magic points for some reason just Tap POW on the bound spirit. They even do this to human souls on occasion (doubles as a handy way to make sure you have permanently disposed of an enemy, none of this Resurrection stuff). 

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Brown Vadeli are bound to know some form of Resurrection, or possibly something like "(Re)Grow Body".

Is this your own speculation, or do you have a source?

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

In RQ terms they probably have casting skills above 100%, in HQ terms at least 2 masteries. They are likely to have inscribed spells with a huge number of points already prepaid.

I certainly agree on the very high skills. It helps to be immortal. 

 

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Vadeli tactics you have described are little different from what you'd expect from the Kingdom of War. You left out meat shields, or sending burning hostages or captives back to the foes. Using (captive) children like the trolls use trollkin.

Well, yes and no. The Kingdom of War as a collective entity is ruthless and cruel, but the individual cults of war still retain their own customs, and plenty of them have traditions of eg personal warrior codes. Or a level of bloodthirstiness for its own sake that means they aren't always particularly smart about it. Or other variations. The Red Vadeli are not just always merciless, treacherous and cruel, they are all also smart and skilled at it - the KoW are not always smart, and nowhere near as skilled. 

To put it another way, the Red Vadeli are essentially all smart high functioning sociopaths. The KoW have a wider variation in psychology, and their sociopaths are often not smart or high functioning. 

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

A field battle against Red Vadeli or Mostali may be similar to scenes from the Battle of the Somme or similar WW1 trench experiences.

Certainly. The Red Vadeli are only going to engage in field battle when they are clear they are going to win, though, and are incredibly tactically smart, so ambushes, 'blitzkrieg' tactics, commando raids, and such are common before they resort to a field battle. They will also happily subjugate others and use them for suicide tactics - back when they had the blue vadeli (I tend to associate the 'Energy separation' magic used by Chirg with the Blue Vadeli, as it doesn't seem to have appeared in the modern era), sucking the Energy from slaves to power spells and sending their zombie bodies to lead advances was likely a favourite tactic. sep

 

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

That bare-chested marine made me think of a spell "transfer damage" - you need a recipient for the damage dealt to the fighter. Every damage exceeding 1 hit point is dealt to the recipient victim, usually someone within sight of the attackers (needs to be within range). Up to the intensity of the spell points of damage can be transfered thus, or until the recipient is killed. Several recipients might be included in the spell, spreading out each individual wound.

That is a nice horrible inversion of the Xemela Transfer Damage healing spells. Nice idea, Joerg! For added emphasis, I bet they love to do it with the damage being transferred to those they have previously captured from the attackers own people. It works best when the attacking warriors can see the damage being transferred to the captured members of their own tribe, especially children. 

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

The brown Vadeli may not engage in hand-to-hand combat (except probably against hostile merfolk, which are valid targets for "fishing"). An ear-witness report is in Missing Lands, "The Vadeli Smile".

Yes. There are some caste restrictions the Vadeli can't easily dodge. They might be able to fight using 'tools' in some circumstances, but certainly they aren't able to be soldiers. 

16 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

I assume that the Red Vadeli fight in a more individualist style than Brithini horali; ideal for boarding actions.

I agree. And for obvious reasons, they do not go into the field commanded by Talars, so are less coordinated. 

[M Helsdon]

23 hours ago, Joerg said:

The brown Vadeli may not engage in hand-to-hand combat (except probably against hostile merfolk, which are valid targets for "fishing"). An ear-witness report is in Missing Lands, "The Vadeli Smile".

Curiously there is no hand-to-hand combat  seen or heard in The Vadeli Smile, just a number of dead sea creatures left on deck when the ship rolls upright.

8 hours ago, davecake said:

I agree. And for obvious reasons, they do not go into the field commanded by Talars, so are less coordinated. 

Concur.

[Joerg]

8 hours ago, davecake said:

On 5/20/2020 at 12:48 PM, Joerg said:

The Brown Vadeli are bound to know some form of Resurrection, or possibly something like "(Re)Grow Body".

Is this your own speculation, or do you have a source?

I was fed a similar idea from a character description in How The West Was One, so no, I don't have a canonical or published source.

My reasoning is that fishing is one of the most lethal occupations in the world. The average life expectance of a fisherman say on the Aran Islands, on the Norwegian Vesteralen islands and probably in many other a pre-technological place was 25 or so. Yet the Vadeli are immortals who expect nothing after death, and most Vadeli have a millennium or two of memories, despite the fact that their equivalent of the zzaburi are lost.

HtWW1 played with the idea that the Brown Vadeli clone themselves to maintain their immortality, alongside with using their numerous children for immortality rites, with few if any ever seeing adulthood.

Hence my idea of a Grow Body, or a Regrow Body, using a living human (or a Vadeli adolescent initiation rite) to achieve corporeal immortality.

Not entirely my own speculation. No hard evidence. A vile rumor.

 

Those early big Glorantha freeforms of Convulsions (and their imitations at big conventions elsewhere, or after it became Continuum) don't get the recognition they deserve in the history of Gloranthan roleplaying in Shannon Applecline's Designers and Dragons, even though Shannon himself was at least periphercally involved in one of the imitations, The Broken Council. While only few complete sets of the casts of these freeforms were distributed, they were still heavily publicized in the post-convention booklets which had the first person narratives of the players in the freeforms. The same went for the character write-ups in later freeforms.

The ones by Reaching Moon Megacorp were the pioneers in scale and scope, and they were written with access to unpublished material from Greg, making them a main venue of these unpublished Gloranthan stories into the fandom. As such, they have had an immense outreach.

The authors delighted in bringing in all manner of pop culture references into the game. Fairly often the origins of these references got obscured as these got handed along, or were left unrecognized as people who received the information first- or second-hand may not have had the necessary acculturation to get all these in-jokes. What does "Guy de Loimbard" evoke to you?

I was one of the imitators when I participated in creating and running Heroes of Wisdom and Rise of Ralios, and also in developing RQ3 content from that info, and I can attest that I didn't get a number of those in-jokes and used them as hard Gloranthan facts until way later. I assume that there are still things in those write-ups that I have had no exposure to in my career as a nerd/geek/whatever due to lack of access to those media. Those were the days of the internet when posting a 250 kByte image was cursed upon by people who accessed their data using acoustic modems. Access to other places' movies or comics was basically non-existant if no local distributor carried them (in my case, in translation, obscuring the references even more).

This means I can only guess at the source of the author(s) responsible for the Vadeli character in HtWW1. Paraphrasing a passage from that write-up: "You met Hrestol once. He had bad breath."

 

For a full exposure to the style these characters were written, I'll point you to @Nick Brooke's Moonie Madness pages on etyries.com which have the full cast of the Life of Moonson freeform. A nice corrolary to the Rough Guide to Glamour. The Rough Guide isn't complete without those. Were there any post-convention write-ups of what actually was played out in those freeforms? The one thing that is lacking from the Freeform data is the schedule for referee-introduced events, but those may be reflected in post-action write-ups.

8 hours ago, davecake said:

That is a nice horrible inversion of the Xemela Transfer Damage healing spells. Nice idea, Joerg! For added emphasis, I bet they love to do it with the damage being transferred to those they have previously captured from the attackers own people. It works best when the attacking warriors can see the damage being transferred to the captured members of their own tribe, especially children. 

That's exactly how I pictured this spell to be used, yes. Innocent bystanders will do for soaking up the damage, but pulling up kin of the enemies is a well-proven method for psychological warfare.

 

8 hours ago, davecake said:

On 5/20/2020 at 12:48 PM, Joerg said:

The Vadeli tactics you have described are little different from what you'd expect from the Kingdom of War. You left out meat shields, or sending burning hostages or captives back to the foes. Using (captive) children like the trolls use trollkin.

Well, yes and no. The Kingdom of War as a collective entity is ruthless and cruel, but the individual cults of war still retain their own customs, and plenty of them have traditions of eg personal warrior codes. Or a level of bloodthirstiness for its own sake that means they aren't always particularly smart about it. Or other variations. The Red Vadeli are not just always merciless, treacherous and cruel, they are all also smart and skilled at it - the KoW are not always smart, and nowhere near as skilled. 

Sure. The Vadeli make extensive use of mercenaries, too - the native of Ygg's Isles being their preferred mercenaries as the Opening came to them. Others as they were available - the Umathelans and Fonritians when they did their "returned deities" spiel down south. The Kingdom of War has samples from almost all the mercenaries in the world.

 

17 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Curiously there is no hand-to-hand combat  seen or heard in The Vadeli Smile, just a number of dead sea creatures left on deck when the ship rolls upright.

The attack on the ship is a magical one. The other Vadeli story in Missing Lands (the one about fishing the Red Herring with the aid of local Ouori merfolk) doesn't have a combat scene.

In no way I was asking you to draw a Brown Vadeli fighter of merfolk using hand-to-hand methods. An image of their sorcery doing so would be nice, how can we commission something like that?

A few observations on that text: There are Vadeli sailors missing from the crew, but nobody seems to worry. The loss of these bodies doesn't seem to matter much for the continuation of those individuals. That lends some credence to the HtWW1 theory spoilered above.

[M Helsdon]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

The attack on the ship is a magical one. The other Vadeli story in Missing Lands (the one about fishing the Red Herring with the aid of local Ouori merfolk) doesn't have a combat scene.

Speculation. Reads more as one of the Doom Currents or a tidal wave.

[M Helsdon]

Latest.

Hither came Konar the Vesmonstran, black-haired, sullen-eyed, spear in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of Glorantha under his sandalled feet.

Edited May 22, 2020 by M Helsdon

[Nick Brooke]

3 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Latest.

Hither came Konar the Vesmonstran, black-haired, sullen-eyed, spear in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of Glorantha under his sandalled feet.

Didn't we see that guy somewhere before, conspiring in a Safelstran back alley with a high priestess, an Arkati sorcerer and a noblewoman? <link>

[M Helsdon]

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Didn't we see that guy somewhere before, conspiring in a Safelstran back alley with a high priestess, an Arkati sorcerer and a noblewoman? <link>

That's his uncle.

But yes, I detected the reference in Jan's illustration and decided to do a homage.

[M Helsdon]

Latest.

Additional: I always wanted to show how a sarissa is carried in two parts in Armies & Enemies, but ran out time (and space).

This sketch also permitted another SDT variation to be illustrated. I don't know if I will do a sketch for the Fronelan SD, but if I do, the phalangite will be wearing a Western style helmet with a face-mask.

Edited May 23, 2020 by M Helsdon

[M Helsdon]

Latest.

Decided to change his sword from a klanth.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Holy moley that shield is absolutely gorgeous.